Hear Oneohtrix Point Never’s scrapped Usher demo

Recently, in Stereogum‘s cover story on the artist, Daniel Lopatin explained that Usher came to an Anohni show, who Lopatin had been working with at the time, and complimented a two-minute noise interlude that Lopatin had written, even going so far as to say that was he wanted his next album to sound just like that. Unfortunately, Usher — and arguably mainstream pop music at large, save for a few figureheads like SOPHIE, Let’s Eat Grandma, etc. — has yet to embrace experimental noise, so the artist never used Lopatin’s work — though it eventually went on to become Age Of‘s”The Station.”

Recently, in a note on Twitter, Lopatin resurfaced the original demo and gave some background on its creation. “In 2016 I was on tour with Anohni and wrote a demo then called ‘dejavu’ in a hotel room in London,” he goes to say. “This song became the record ‘The Station.’ The topline which was written for Usher is insinuated with the right handmelody. The final version of the song has a much different topline and a loopy coda that’s kind of a metaphor for train tracks. In 2016 it was just some nice chords and melody.”